Electric cars for all!

I have not been overly concerned about "Peak Oil" and the myriad of doomsayers who are predicting a total breakdown of civilization. I have (perhaps misplaced) confidence that humanity's innovative nature will rise to the challenge and meet the needs of a modern, technological society. While I am trying to grow more edibles at home, it's not so much out of a fear of those items no longer being available in stores as it is a pursuit of personal satisfaction.

Despite our bullheadedness and persistent selfishness, I still believe that we will solve our problems long before we devolve back into cave-dwellers fighting over every scrap of food or clothing.

The following could be one of those solutions.

From the Desk of David Pogue
Electric Cars for All! (No, Really This Time)
By DAVID POGUE
Published: March 19, 2009

Last Sunday, "CBS News Sunday Morning" broadcast my report about Better Place, a radical, overarching plan to replace the world's gas cars with electric ones—really, really quickly. The nutty thing is, it just might work; the streetside charging outlets for these cars are already under construction in six countries and two U.S. states. (You can watch the story here.)

As always, there wasn't enough time on TV for the whole interview. So here's a longer, edited excerpt of my chat with Better Place chief executive Shai Agassi, former SAP executive.

DP: Explain how this is different from all the failed electric car programs that have come before.

SA: Most of the car efforts were done from within the car, and assuming that there is no infrastructure change at all. It's as if people were trying to build cars, but skipping over the gas station.

We started from the infrastructure. We came up with an electric car that would have two features that nobody had before. 1) The battery is removable. So if you wanted to go a long distance, you could switch your battery instead of waiting for it to charge for a very long time. And 2) It was cheaper than gasoline car, not more expensive. Because you didn't buy the battery. You paid just for the miles and for the car.

DP: So what will you guys make? What will you do?

SA: We sell miles, the way that AT&T sells you minutes. They buy bandwidth and they translate into minutes. We buy batteries and clean electrons--we only buy electrons that come from renewable sources--and we translate that into miles.

DP: What are we talking about here? What's the infrastructure you're building?

SA: We have two pieces of infrastructure. 1) Charge spots. And they will be everywhere, like parking meters, only instead of taking money from you when you park, they give you electrons. And they will be at home, they'll be at work, they'll be at downtown and retail centers. As if you have a magic contract with Chevron or Exxon that every time you stop your car and go away, they fill it up.

Now, that gives us the ability to drive most of our drives, sort of a 100-mile radius. And that's most of the drives we do. But we also take care of the exceptional drive. You want to go from Boston to New York. And so on the way, we have what we call switch stations: lanes inside gas stations. You go into the switch station, your depleted battery comes out, a full battery comes in, and you keep driving. It takes you about two, three minutes--less than filling with gasoline--and you can keep on going.

DP: But it sounds like you're talking about a parallel universe, where there are hundreds of thousands of charging spots and switch stations. There aren't any.

SA: Well, that's what we're building. If you think of our first location in Israel, we will have about a quarter of a million charge spots before the first car shows up. Just like you wouldn't buy a cell phone on a network that wasn't built yet. You have to first build the network. And then let the cars come in.

And so we put a massive investment in big infrastructure projects: Green jobs. A new electric infrastructure for cars.

You can read the rest of the interview here.)